Exclusion of petroleum from GST delays uniform taxation, sustaining revenue allocation frictions and raising compliance and price burdens.
Section 9(2) of the CGST Act, 2017 keeps five petroleum products (the Panchratnas) outside GST until notified otherwise, preserving existing central and state tax regimes. This temporal exclusion denies uniform GST treatment and input tax credit for those supplies, forcing integrated oil companies to operate under dual tax rules, complicate apportionment of input credits, and raise compliance and pricing issues that affect consumers and distribution of tax revenue. (AI Summary)

Goods and Services Tax implementation hampered by unready GSTN and provisional returns, prompting calls to relax filing frequency.
The article identifies the rushed rollout of the Goods and Services Tax and the unprepared GSTN as central failures: last minute notifications and frequent amendments created taxpayer uncertainty about tax treatment, while system outages, untrained service providers and unusable forms forced the Government to adopt a provisional GSTR 3B and repeatedly extend filing deadlines. It recommends suspending monthly filing in favour of quarterly or half yearly returns until the infrastructure and support ecosystem are reliable. (AI Summary)